Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes by Jack Lewis

first page.
The diary was filled with two sets of handwriting. One was child-like, full of
sloppy squiggles and crosses through the words. Every so often a paragraph
would break, and the next paragraph was written perfectly. It was the stylish
handwriting of a guided hand, and there was a control to it that could only
have been achieved with maturity. The letters bunched together so tightly they
were like a chain that couldn’t be broken.
     
    I felt my head begin to pound. I
strained my eyes to make out the words, but my brain just wouldn’t process
them. I felt like I had forgotten how to read. For a second, I thought I was
having a fit.
     
    “It’s in code,” said Jeremiah.
     
    I looked closer and saw that the
adult-style writing was indeed written in code. The letters were standard
alphabet but they were matched in ways that made no sense.  I flicked through
the book and saw page after page of childish writing – ‘ mum sent me to my
room last night’ – followed by precise handwriting written in mismatched
letters and words that made no sense.
     
    Two thirds into the book the writing
stopped abruptly, like a movie paused before the end. The last paragraph was in
the adult-style but the words were bold and angry, as though someone had
written the words and then gone over them again and again to make them darker.
It was like someone had pressed deep into the page as they wrote to try and
gouge the words into the book.
     
    My hands started to ache as though
the book was pressing into my skin. I had a light feeling on my chest like
someone were trying to push me back. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt that the
book shouldn’t be in my hands. The branches of the trees swayed above me, like
hands reaching down to choke me. My throat tightened.
     
    I threw the book on Jeremiah’s lap.
He jerked back in shock, and then took hold of it. I tried to hide the feeling
of dread that sat heavy on my shoulders.
     
    “Over to you,” I said, hoping that
the crack in my voice didn’t show. I was glad to have the diary away from me.
     
    “It’s written with a cipher,” said
Jeremiah. “This kind of code works with the use of a word chosen by the person
who wrote it. It acts as a key.”
     
    “So we have no chance of reading it,”
I said. “It could have been anything.”
     
    “Not quite. People usually use a word
that means something to them.”
     
    I shook my head and felt it throb.
“How the hell would a seven year old girl know how to do this?”
     
    “This girl was older than she
appeared.”
     
    “So what now?”
     
    Jeremiah let the book rest on his
lap. The piece of evidence excited him, I knew, but it was like he didn’t want
to hold it. I wondered if he felt the same way I did when I had the book
between my fingers.
     
    “We need to work on the cipher. I’ll
make a copy at the library, and we can both go to our rooms and try and figure
it out. You take the original.”
     
    I shrank back in my seat. “Why me?”
     
    “You were a seven year old girl,
once. You know how they think.”
     
    “You’re not so different to a seven
year old girl yourself,” I said.

 
    14
     
    As night fell I sat at my desk with a
book on Polish urban myths in front of me. My chest felt heavy and my brain
swam in a thick sludge that blocked my nose. I got colds all the time, but I
rarely felt this horrible. The last time was in a foster house. Again, the bad
one.
     
    It was the heart of winter and I lay
in bed. Frost spread over the windows like spider’s webs, and a layer of shadow
covered the walls. I didn’t have a duvet, only a thin sheet that should have
been used to cover it. My foster parent’s house was rich with drapes and
paintings, and crystal ornaments glinted from every shelf. Despite the showing
of wealth, poverty was hidden in the places no one knew to look. Carved oak cupboards
contained cheap tins of beans, and inside panelled wardrobes were clothes that
were years old. They had been